Perhaps it’s because my father was a design engineer most of his working life, at one point being the chief engineer for Sunbeam’s small products division back when that brand’s name really meant something. He taught me to appreciate good industrial design. I probably learned Raymond Loewy’s name when I was no more than six, and today I can rattle off the names of a dozen more industrial designers without breaking a sweat.
But more likely it has to do with the fact that he and my mother had me late in life. I grew up with parents who were the age of my contemporaries’ grandparents. And I was blessed that they both lived into their nineties.
Whatever the reason, I find myself thinking countless times each day “How is an old person supposed to operate this?” “How are hands crippled by arthritis, or shaking from essential tremor supposed to open this?” “How are eyes beset by myopia or cataracts supposed to be able to see this?” This is the “invisible” ageism that surrounds us: Product design.
When I was looking to give my folks their first microwave oven as a Christmas gift, I had to search before I found one with two simple controls. Knobs. You turned one to Low, Medium, or High, to select the power level. You turned the other one to set the amount of time the oven would run, like a wind up egg timer. Easy peasy, and frankly, all you really need.
But manufacturers have done away with knobs. They’ve been replaced by ribbon switches, which are cheaper to manufacture. Not to replace necessarily, but to make. So instead of two large and simple knobs to turn, there is a touch pad. If you are lucky the manufacturer has been kind enough to mold the plastic overlay with slight bubbles over the numbers, so there is some tactile feedback to indicate your finger is indeed about to press a “button.”
Unlike a rotary knob with its markings or a real button that when pushed can remain depressed, these phony buttons don’t actually indicate anything when pressed. For that you need an LED readout. So the elderly person has to crouch over and peer at the inevitably small numbers to verify things.
And that alone isn’t enough, of course, because depending on the order in which the ribbon switches are pressed, the number “5” on the readout could mean five seconds. Or five minutes. Or half power.
When it comes to prescription medicines an older person is fortunate. Their bottles generally have a brilliantly designed cap that can be flipped one way to make it difficult for a young child to open, and another way that makes it easy to open for households without children.
But over the counter medicines? Forget about it. Remember there is no such thing as tamper proof packaging. Any packaging can be breached, even if only by hypodermic needle. And no manufacturer would ever claim their packaging is tamper proof. It is tamper evident. Which means that if someone has messed with it you should be able to immediately tell just by looking at it.
And yet over the counter nostrums are likely to have packaging that goes far beyond what’s needed to make it tamper evident. Pills packed in blister packs that even a miniature Houdini couldn’t break out of. Plastic shrink-wrapped around the cap of an eye drops bottle that requires the delicate wielding of a steak knife to slice open. How many older Americans have injured themselves trying to do this? Or simply given up?
Consumer tech certainly isn’t any better. A typical television remote these days is likely to contain a couple dozen small buttons (albeit real buttons, for now at least.) As much as I detest the cable TV company I refer to as “Comcrap,” they did provide a truly giant sized remote to my elderly sister at no charge. But no such option is available for her TV itself, or for her DVD player.
Smartphones are, of course, another minefield for many older individuals. While Apple has long done admirable work in accessibility, allowing users to enlarge type, reverse black on white lettering to white on black, and of course voice control, even the largest smartphones...the ones referred to in the industry as “phablets”...a portmanteau of “phone” and “tablet”...can be difficult for an older individual to operate. My sister who, simply because of her age was technologically illiterate, was residing in a nursing home that, astoundingly, did not have phones in its residents’ rooms. Communication with her required me to search for the simplest phone I could find, a flip-phone that ran an ancient version of Android, which she still struggled with every day.
Alarmingly, more and more companies as well as government agencies are shrinking or doing away entirely with customer service lines and directing individuals to access them via computer. This is of course classist as well as ageist as many individuals do not own computers or have affordable internet service, leaving a smartphone as their only option, if they can afford...and operate... that.
Automotive design is heading towards a nightmare for older individuals. Knobs and switches are being replaced by touchpads. Smooth displays that provide no place to rest a hand to steady it while operating. Displays that, since their virtual buttons provide no tactile feedback nor occupy any unique position on the dashboard require taking one’s eyes off the road for an extended period of time. And any older person will vouch that the ability of the lenses in your eyes to pull a “rack focus” from distance to close up starts to deteriorate around age forty.
No manufacturer is guiltier of this than Tesla. Elon Musk has yet to learn that just because a certain technology allows you to do something, it doesn’t necessarily mean you should.
My fifteen year old Camry’s steering wheel has at least seven individual controls on it. They are of differing shapes, in differing positions, with unique feelings under the fingertips. I can easily operate any one of them without taking a hand off the wheel or my eyes off the road, or if I do so it is a simple downward and upward glance with my eyes. I don’t have to look over and down to a touchscreen and then reach out to a virtual button while the bumpy Illinois road makes my hand bob up and down.
Tesla has replaced steering wheel controls with just two rollerballs that also function as buttons when pressed. Dedicating what exactly these rollerballs control requires first scrolling through a selection on the center mounted display, and then pressing down on the rollerball to select it. Sort of like controlling your car by mouse. If I understand correctly, even the windshield wipers are operated this way, as opposed to the easy and immediately accessible stalk on my steering column that I press down for low speed, downward again for high speed, and pull towards me for washer fluid. Intermittent wiping speed is controlled by a simple rotary knob on the end of the stalk. Tesla has even eliminated the turn signal stalk!
And now the MegaloMuskiac has decided to replace the steering wheel itself with a yoke. I’ve always been a “car guy” and in the course of my life I’ve witnessed all sorts of proposals to replace the steering wheel. Show-cars with joysticks, or even knobs you turned to steer. Yet there’s a reason the steering wheel has prevailed since it replaced the tiller 120 years ago: It works. It works perfectly. It has never, and most likely will never be improved upon.
In case it isn’t obvious, I regard this abandonment of knobs and switches in automobiles to be a menace when operated by anyone of any age. Government always lags technology by several years, but it is my fervent hope that the NHTSA eventually rolls out some regulations that relegate touchscreen controls to no more than a few incidentals, such as controlling the radio and the HVAC system. It’s also on my “to-do” list to write the agency about this very issue.
I urge you, as you go about your day today, to pause every time you lay your hands on a commercial product, be it an aspirin bottle or a toaster oven, a computer or a coffee maker, and ask yourself if the manufacturer designed the product with any awareness whatsoever that…barring an early demise…everyone gets old.